Deafness can be mild, moderate, severe or profound. People with mild deafness have some difficulty following speech, mainly in noisy situations. It can be caused by an illness, by an injury, or by genetic inheritance. Deafness can cause difficulty communicating and people who are deaf may be at risk of physical and social isolation. Deafness at birth is known as congenital deafness, while deafness that occurs after birth is called adventitious deafness. The most common cause of adventitious deafness is noise, which accounts for over one quarter of people affected by hearing loss. Those with deafness or partial hearing are at a greater risk of accidents because they may not hear warning alarms and sirens. Hearing loss can also be classified based on which portions of the hearing system are affected. When the nervous system is affected, it is referred to as sensorineural hearing loss. Deafness can range from mild to profound and is caused by many different events including injury, disease and genetic defects. There are various ways to categorise deafness. The two main types of deafness are conductive deafness and nerve deafness.

Vaccination against infections and avoiding excessive noise exposure reduces the risk of deafness. Drugs sometimes cause hearing loss. The aminoglycoside family of intravenous antibiotics are the drugs most commonly implicated, particularly when given in high doses. Hearing loss also may be due to damage to the sensory structures (hair cells) of the inner ear, auditory nerve, or auditory nerve pathways in the brain. Age-related hearing loss is called presbycusis. Age-related hearing loss begins early, starting some time after age 20. However, it progresses very slowly, and most people do not notice any changes until well after age 50. Age-related hearing loss first affects the highest pitches (frequencies) and only later affects lower pitches. Loss of the ability to hear high-pitched sounds often makes it more difficult to understand speech. Acquired hearing loss is a hearing loss which appears after birth, at any time in one's life, perhaps as a result of a disease, a condition, or an injury. Removing wax and foreign bodies, and treating infections and glue ear helps improve hearing.

Prevention of Deafness

Be aware of damaging noise.

If your teenager is doing lawn work for the summer, using a gasoline engine and not wearing hearing protection, hour after hour, it's doing damage.

Home Remedies for Deafness

Drop a small amount of warm neem oil in the ears.

Take a sallow leaf of the plant of swallow worf. See that it has no holes. Heat it on fire a little and then extract its juice and drop it into the affected ear. Repeat this treatment for atleast two weeks for curing the ailment completely. Even the wound in the ear can also be cured by this treatment.